One in five Australian Year 10 students will not continue to Year 12. That's according to new analysis on the state of education in Australia from the Productivity Commission.
The rate of students staying in school until Year 12 has declined since 2014.
The Commission also found that student attendance rates from Year 1 to Year 10 have fallen nearly 5% since 2015.
Commission
Australia’s Productivity Commission was established to offer suggestions to improve “economic performance and community wellbeing”.
It is funded by the Government, which can ask it to examine particular topics, but it does its research independently.
The Government is not required to accept its recommendations.
Senior School
The proportion of students continuing from Year 10 to Year 12 in 2023 was 79%, down 5% from 2017.
These results exclude students who complete other forms of senior school, such as vocational colleges.
The number of students “fully engaged in work or study” after leaving school in 2024 was 64%, down 10% from 2021.
The Commission found students who finished Year 12 were more likely to be working or studying than those who didn’t.
Attendance
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According to the Commission’s latest analysis, school attendance rates in 2024 were at their lowest in almost a decade.
Student attendance was at 88% for Years 1 to 10, down from nearly 93% in 2015.
Attendance rates were slightly worse in public schools than non-Government schools.
The report also found attendance levels were much lower for students in remote and very remote areas, particularly among First Nations students.
Performance
Last year’s National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results remained steady compared to previous years.
Across the country, the number of students who were “exceeding” or showing “strong” proficiency levels across reading, writing and numeracy ranged between 61% and 77%.
Around 57% of Year 6 students met the “proficiency standard”, compared to 54% of Year 10 students.
Funding
In 2023, there were 4.1 million students across 9,629 registered schools in Australia, with almost 70% being public schools.
Across all levels of government, just under $86 billion was spent on education in 2022/23, 4.4% more than the year before.
Government schools received $64.8 billion, while private schools received $21.2 billion.
